News flourishes as newspapers decline

Reading an extract from Colleen Ryan’s new book, Fairfax: The Rise and Fall, I couldn’t help thinking of the legend of Sultan Mehmet II battering down the walls of Constantinople while the Byzantine Senate was busily debating the sex of angels.

Gina Rinehart, John Singleton, Mark Carnegie, Trevor Kennedy…all buzzing round the Fairfax media empire, forming alliances, grappling for the levers of power – and all either unaware or ignoring the digital cancer that is eating away both profits and influence.

Almost a year ago I wrote in this blog about how British regional newspapers were confronting the challenge of the internet by gradually moving the emphasis from print and paper to their websites. Former dailies had become weeklies with their journalists breaking stories 24/7 online and the print edition serving more as a synopsis of the news for the dwindling band of readers who still wanted to consume it in this way.

Managed properly this is a good model for the future of journalism, both in Britain and around the world, but in Australia we are locked into the old thinking, with the major media empires still seeing the internet as a threat to be confronted rather than an opportunity to embrace.

As a result the “rivers of gold” – the classified advertising that has supported Fairfax, News Ltd and all the other major Australian newspaper companies for generations, are rapidly being diverted into specialist websites such as Seek and allhomes. This trend will inevitably continue with increasing percentages of the population becoming computer literate and the number of devices multiplying.

Slowly, relentlessly, the new technology is knocking down all the old arguments in favour of newspapers. As an example, it was once said they had the advantage over computers because they could be read in the toilet, but that was before the iPad, Android and all the rest.

The hopeful message that executives at Fairfax and the rest have to really learn is that while newspapers are an anachronism, news isn’t. More people than ever are interested in what is going on around them whether it is gossip about the latest adulterous celebrity, the new hybrid car off the assembly line or the performance of their favourite sporting team. But apart from these ‘light’ topics there is increasing demand for ‘hard’ news both domestically and around the world.

I would suggest that the proportion of Australians who are news consumers is greater now than at any time in the country’s history. The difference is that they find it at places other than the newsstands.

Australian media companies can still prosper in the digital world, but only if they sever their attachment to the printed word. “Hot off the presses” and “deadline midnight” now belong to the world of period fiction rather than the 24-hour news cycle, but for the moment at least titles such as the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and even the Canberra Times, still carry goodwill that can be translated into the digital age.

Talented, professional journalists working for online news services, rather than news papers is the way of the future. A commitment to quality and good, old-fashioned beat reporting in the new technological environment would eventually see the rivers of gold running back home.

It remains to be seen whether Rinehart, Singleton and the rest can pause from their intrigues long enough to understand that old-style journalism is under siege and like the Byzantines, will soon belong to history.